


Nights of Lattes and Laughter

by valfreyja



Category: Daughter of Smoke and Bone - Laini Taylor
Genre: AU, Book Club AU, F/M, Gen, Work In Progress
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-11-26
Updated: 2013-11-26
Packaged: 2018-01-02 17:51:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,586
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1059767
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/valfreyja/pseuds/valfreyja
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hazael and Karou are in a book club, along with Liraz, Zuzana, and Ziri. Akiva is an overworked, almost unimaginative, tired man. When he sees a splash of blue in a cafe window one day, little does he realize everything he knows is about to turn upside down. In progress.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Nights of Lattes and Laughter

            It is noon, on a dismal Wednesday morning when he sees the splash of blue. It catches him unaware, and he nearly gives himself whiplash turning around to peer back towards it. His eyes travel frantically, and he wonders if he’s just imagined it (that wouldn’t surprise him, all the training he does often leaves him on the edge of delusion), but then, through the window of a dingy café, he sees a girl, dressed mostly in black, with a curtain of turquoise blue hair falling over her shoulder. The girl looks out of place in the café, at a table by herself, but she’s so engrossed in a book propped up against a coffee mug, it doesn’t even matter.

            Akiva suddenly feels like he’s standing in some sort of gallery, where the sun is actually the harsh, incandescent lighting, and the window of the café is the canvas tamed by a master, an artist who could make the colors themselves bend to his every will. The people rushing around him are those who didn’t care to notice, those that don’t understand the beauty and perfection that lay so close to their unseeing eyes, those who are more interested in more extravagant, obnoxious pieces than this, this masterwork of subtlety and grace.

            He considers going into the café and introducing himself to her, but someone bumps into him, making him drop the drawstring back slung hastily over his shoulder. He picks it up and when he looks back into the window, there is a blond-haired man standing at the table next to her, a sweet-looking frothy beverage in his hands. Akiva almost laughs in surprise; the man is no other than his half-brother, Hazael. Hazael notices Akiva, staring wide-eyed into the café, and waves, doing a small gesture of invitation.

            Akiva frantically shakes his head. Going in would mean having to take the blue haired girl out of the painting of her he’s drawn in his mind. He knows women are more than just creatures to be gaped at, to be put on pedestals, but he doesn’t trust himself around— _wait_. Akiva squints. How in the world does Hazael know the girl?

            The girl says something to Hazael, and Hazael replies something that looks suspiciously like, “my brother.” The girl turns to the window, and flashes him a grin, the flash of teeth both beautiful and Cheshire Cat-like.  She gestures for him to come in too, and the only word Akiva can think of for the movement of her fingers is  _fluttering_. Fluttering like fucking butterflies.

            Fingers don’t flutter, women aren’t paintings, but Akiva finds himself going through the door and under the happy jingle of the welcome bell anyway. He has to cut through the café, squeeze himself through the overcrowded space, but the table where his brother and the girl are unfolds in front of him like a lotus blossom, spreading its petals like wings stretching for the first time.

            “Akiva!” exclaims Hazael, holding his fist out.

            Akiva bumps it. “Yo,” he says, feeling incredibly lame.

            The girl stands up, smiling at him. Her eyes are as dark as night. “So you’re Haz’s incredibly mysterious brother.”

             _“_ Uh, yeah,” he replies, offering her his hand. “Akiva.”  _Mysterious_? Akiva wonders if Hazael’s told her about the time he disappeared for three weeks and came back with more cuts and scrapes and scars than flesh, or whether Hazael’s only being Hazael.

            “Of course,” and she grins again. Her hair is even more unreal up close. Do the laws of physics allow technicolor in real life? “I’m Karou.”

            “Karou.” The word melts in his mouth like sugar. Somewhere, in a very small part of his mind, Akiva wonders what’s gone wrong with the world, whether he forgot to wake up this morning, whether he’s actually walked into a painting. “It’s nice to meet you. I—Hazael never mentioned you.” Or at least, Akiva didn’t think he had; he  _would’ve_  remembered a story about a girl with technicolor blue hair.

            “That’s quite unfortunate,” says Karou, shooting Hazael a look. “But sit down, at least.”

            “No,” says Akiva. As much as he’d like to stay, he doesn’t want to get between his brother and Karou either. “I should get going.”

            “Don’t worry about us,” says Hazael, plunking down into one of the three other chairs around the table. “It’s only pre-book club.”

            “ _You’re_  in a book club?” Akiva raises an eyebrow.

            “Who isn’t in a book club?”

            Karou nods. “I have to say, they’re quite popular right now.”

            “Wait— _pre_ -book club?”

            “Well,” says Hazael. “Not really—”

            “I just wanted to show Haz and Zuze some of my sketches before club tomorrow,” adds Karou. “So sit.”

            Akiva shrugs and settles into the chair right across from Karou. He resolves not to spend more than two seconds looking at Karou and her mesmerizing hair at a time. “So what are you—” he catches the cover of the book propped against the mug, a cover with a girl in a metallic blue mask, the words  _Daughter of Smoke and Bone_  written across the top. “Is that the book?”

            “Nah, that’s just something I picked up yesterday,” says Karou, snapping the cover shut. “It’s—really— _weird_.”

            “Is that the book you texted me about?” asks Hazael, grabbing it. He flips it to the back, eyes widening as he reads the back cover. “Hey—that’s your name.”

            “And her best friend is named Zuzana too,” Karou adds. “How weird, right? I’m not too far in, but—” she grins, “it gets even weirder.”

            Hazael gasps. “Take a look this!” he says, offering the book to Akiva.

            Akiva holds his hand out for the book, and Hazael sets it in his hands. He starts flipping through the pages, and nearly drops it when he sees his own name on one of the pages. He also catches the word angel and  _hamsa_. He looks up at Karou and Hazael, who are both staring at him with amused expressions.  “This is some kind of joke, right?”

            Karou shrugs. She picks the book out of his hands and slips it back into a heavily-buttoned, worn canvas bag at the side of her chair. “Thank goodness we’re not doing this for club, because I think Liraz would have a fit.”

            Akiva sends Hazael what he hopes is a scathing look. “Liraz is in this book club too.” Liraz was his other half-sister, although he didn’t peg her as someone who liked to read at all. She’d always struck him as more of the MMA-for-fun type.

            A slight flush rises on Hazael’s face, but he doesn’t seem sheepish in the least. “We asked if you wanted to join, three months ago! It’s not our fault you’re too busy lifting weights all day.”

            “You’re a body builder?” asks Karou.

            Akiva ignores Hazael. He vaguely remembers the two of them cornering him one afternoon, but they were almost always doing that, trying to get him to go out with them or join a class at the community center. Of course, Akiva would have joined something if his work gave him a moment to breathe more than just now and then… “I actually work for the NSA,” he says to Karou.

            Karou raises her eyebrows and lets out a low whistle. “No wonder you’re so mysterious.”

            “It’s really not that cool a job, more paperwork than anything,” he says. Lots of covert security missions. Meaning, he spends all his time writing clearance forms and staring blearily at undecipherable, classified text.

            Hazael pretends to look affronted. “Are you telling me you’re not actually a spy?”

            “I didn’t say I wasn’t a spy,” Akiva says to Hazael, sniffing. He watches Karou looking thoroughly amused from the corner of his eyes and wonders what the sound of her laugh would be like.

            As if on cue, Karou laughs, the sound just as sweet as her name. “You didn’t tell me he was funny too.”

            Hazael looks shocked. “I didn’t know either! Tell us another joke, brother,” he says, leaning forward, chin resting in his hands. His crystal blue eyes sparkle the way they usually do when he’s amused.

            Akiva feels his face grow hot, and thanks the godstars his dark skin doesn’t redden in embarrassment. “Uh—well, I did hear this one about a pigeon once—I think—a pigeon walks into a bar? No, a pigeon tries to sit down on an electric wire—oh, dammit, sorry—it was funny when I heard it—”

            Both Hazael and Karou are watching him with raised eyebrows, their lips twitching.

            Akiva slinks back against his chair. “Fine, you can laugh at me,” he sighs.

            Karou and Hazael look at each other and burst into laughter. A few of the patrons around them glance towards them and for some strange reason, some of them giggle, their combined laughter spreading like an infection. Akiva, despite his growing mortification, smiles as well, wondering how long it took for the stars to align to this, precise, bizarre moment.

            Akiva watches Karou as her laughter subsides, and Karou also lets her eyes rest on his, a Cheshire grin on curling across her face. If Akiva believed in romantic nonsense, he would say there’s a spark between them, something tangible just waiting to be seized and gently worked into a fire, blazing as brightly as Karou’s laughter.

            But Akiva doesn’t believe in that kind of thing, no more than he believes this is anything but a strange dream, brought onto the doorstep of his life.


End file.
